Chapter III: Plant breeding

The State may obtain ex officio, at any time, for the needs of national defence, a licence to exploit a plant variety which is the subject of an application for a certificate or a breeder’s certificate, whether such exploitation is carried out by itself or on its behalf. The ex officio licence is granted, at the request of the minister responsible for defence, by order of the minister for agriculture….

The rights attached to an ex-officio licence may not be assigned or transferred.

The State may, at any time, by decree, expropriate in whole or in part for the needs of national defence plant varieties, the subject of applications for certificates or certificates. Failing amicable agreement, the expropriation compensation shall be fixed by the judicial court.

Where the holder of a patent for a biotechnological invention cannot exploit the invention without infringing a prior plant variety right, he may apply for a licence to exploit the variety protected by the variety right, provided that the invention constitutes, in relation to the plant variety, a significant technical advance and is of considerable economic interest. The applicant must prove that he has not been able to obtain a…

The licence application provided for in Article L. 623-22-1 shall be made to the judicial court. The licence is non-exclusive. In particular, the court shall determine its duration, scope and the amount of royalties to which it gives rise. These conditions may be modified by decision of the court, at the request of the holder of the right or licence. The rights attached to this licence may only be transferred…

Any person governed by public or private law may obtain a compulsory licence under the conditions set out in this article and in Article L. 623-22-4. The application for a compulsory licence is made to the judicial court in the place where the right holder is located. It must be accompanied by proof that: 1° The applicant has not been able to obtain a licence within one year from the…

The rights attached to a compulsory licence may not be assigned or transferred except with the undertaking or part of the undertaking to which they are attached. This assignment or transfer is, on pain of nullity, subject to the authorisation of the court.

The rights of any holder of a plant variety certificate shall be forfeited: 1° Who is unable to present to the administration at any time the elements of reproduction or vegetative propagation making it possible to reproduce the protected variety with the morphological and physiological characteristics as defined in the plant variety certificate ; 2° Who refuses to submit to inspections made with a view to verifying the measures he…

The plant variety certificate shall be declared null and void, by court decision, if it is established that: 1° Either it has been granted to a person who was not entitled to it, unless it is transferred to the person entitled to it; 2° Or that on the date on which it was granted the variety did not satisfy the conditions mentioned in Article L. 623-2.

The provisions of Articles L. 613-8 and L. 613-29 to L. 613-32 shall apply to applications for plant variety certificates and breeder’s certificates. The same applies to articles L. 613-9, L. 613-21 and L. 613-24, the body mentioned in Article L. 412-1 being substituted for the Institut national de la propriété industrielle. Article L. 611-7 is also applicable to plant variety certificates, in which case inventions are understood as plant…